Non-Binary Gender

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Main
  • Wikipedia
  • All Subpages
  • Create New
    /wiki/Non-Binary Genderwork

    To define something that is defined by a lack of something else, we should discuss that something else first. The gender binary is pretty simple: It is simply "boy" or "girl". Now, this has nothing to do with sex. All male and female means is penis/testes and vagina/ovaries respectively and is completely unrelated to gender or personality. However, human society has long made connections between sex and what that person is like. Thus, almost as soon as civilization was created, so too came the concept of gender.

    Men and big muscles, women and sewing, these and things like these are a result of the human imagination and conditioning in subsequent generations. As mentioned, sex has nothing to do with personality, but society has long thought it has, resulting in the creation of gender and gender roles.

    Gender, not being an actual, tangible thing, has rightfully become something people now have the freedom to choose based on how they feel and personally identify rather than by what genitals they have. A female raised as a girl may decide he is really a man, while another may decide they are a girl who just doesn't fit the stereotype and prefers to behave in traditionally boyish ways. In other words, it's up to the individual to decide their identity based on which feelings of gender (or lack thereof) they have".

    Some people may not feel like a boy or a girl, and wish to identify as something else entirely. Thus, the term "non-binary".

    Non-binary, often shortened to NB or enby, is a broad term. Wikipedia lists some variations on their genderqueer (another term for non-binary) page:

    • Two or more genders (bigender, trigender, pangender);
    • Without a gender (nongendered, genderless, agender; neutrois)
    • Moving between genders or with fluctuating gender identity (genderfluid)
    • Third gender or other-gendered; includes those who do not place a name to their gender

    Enby people are often derided for attempting to be "special snowflakes". A subsection of trans people who go by the term truscum (which started out as an insult initially) generally believe someone can only identify as either a boy or a girl and must feel dysphoria to be trans. Ironically, this is similar to "radfems", feminists who accuse transwomen of faking and trying to "infiltrate" women-only spaces.

    Common pronouns for non-binary people are xi/xir/xirs/xirself, hi/hir/hirs/hirself, and similar things that sound similar to the he/she sets. Some however might keep on using their birth pronouns, or allow any set of one or more pronouns to be used (to give an example, she/they means that you may use either she or they as the pronoun when referring to a non-binary person). Non-binary people have also taken to creating what are called "cute pronouns". Controversial, these are things like "bunself" or "starself". Often mistakenly cited as otherkin being transphobic by social justice warriors, the users of cute pronouns are actually non-binary and almost entirely human-identifying.

    Non-binary genders actually have an interesting historical precedent. In Native American and Canadian First Nations cultures, "two-spirit" is a form of non-binary/genderqueer identity, named so because they were believed to have the spirits of both binary genders within them. According to the biographer of a famous two-spirit, the identity has been "documented in over 130 North America tribes, in every region of the continent." Some Native LGBT activists actively reject the concept of two-spiritedness as a modern gender identity, however, claiming that it is rooted in compulsion of people who refused to be traditionally masculine/feminine (i.e. men who refused to take up the roles of hunting and/or leading households were forced to do female labour against their own free will) rather than it being a free, personal choice, which is a cornerstone of being non-binary. Similar sentiments exist in regards to other cases of noted pre-modern gender-defying traditions, like for example the sworn virgins of the Balkans, the bacha posh of Afghanistan, the hjira of India and Pakistan (which are legally recognized as a separate identity but generally not considered to be LGBT+ by the locals) and the variously-named Polynesian traditions of men who perform female social roles.

    As well, Australia allows people to mark their gender as X, meaning "indeterminate". Other countries which allow non-binary identification usually do something similar, mostly for logistics reasons.

    No real life examples, please; we'd be here all day.

    Examples of Non-Binary Gender include:


    Video Games

    • Undertale has a few characters who are referred to with singular they pronouns.
      • The Fallen Human (The human the player names.)
      • Frisk
      • Monster Kid
      • Napstablook